Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback! I will for sure up the size of the UI elements and increase the font size in general. And your suggestions for the shop interface to show pricing and what not will for sure be implemented. Glad you got some enjoyment out of it and thanks again for the feedback!
drewd
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Hello friend! Sorry to hear the game jam was a little too anxiety inducing. But for some perspective, you are in a short jam and solo with not much development experience going based on the 120hours. I wouldn't be hard on yourself at all just because you weren't able to finish your submission or get it fully within the scope you envisioned. Jams are about experimenting and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, it's okay to feel anxious about it and its okay if it doesn't work out. I encourage you to try some longer form game jams (7+ days) where you can really take your time and flush out your ideas.
I mean heck I have who knows how many hours of dev experience (a lot less in game dev though) and I still struggle to make game jam submissions that are passable as games! The fact of the matter is learn from it but don't let this game jam define your view of game jams. Keep taking risks and challenging yourself, its the best way to improve your craft. For now take a bit of a rest and then come back stronger. Good luck :)
Couldn't agree more! It's also my first time doing a game jam by myself, it was quite intimidating to develop and ship an idea in such a short time alone but it's honestly why I enjoy game jams so much. Often I find my ideas get buried and I'm stuck on mountains of tech debt that I try to chug through, but for game jams you are forced to cut and bring your scope down to reality. It reinforces that the end result is in fact attainable!
Thanks for playing and extra thanks for the feedback! Both the tooltips and item rotation are things I'm currently implementing! I completely agree with you it's very limited with items stuck in a single orientation and aside from the tabs the items can be a bit of a guessing game like the cabinets example you provided! It's super helpful feedback and reinforces my priorities atm, thanks a ton!
Thanks for playing and thank you so much for the nice comment :). Animal Crossing was definitely an inspo here as my gf got me into it this year and I quite enjoy that game now!
As for your experience with the evaluation system unfortunately I miss tagged the TV stands so they aren't properly tracked in the submission process which means you can't perfect the level. I patched it on my end already but I digress.
As for how the evaluation system works since you're the second person to ask about it I'll try and cover it in some detail:
Client have what is essentially a requirements dictionary. The keys of this dictionary are item names and they hold a dictionary containing two particular values, a "count" and a "weight". Here's an example:
{"bed": {"count": 2, "weight": 4}, "stove": {"count": 1, "weight": 4}}
The count is the ideal number of the furniture piece the submission should include and the weight is how many points it is worth. Weight can also be better interpreted as how much that furniture matters to the client.
When the player submits the design I collect all the player placed objects and then a count dictionary for them. Since at this stage in the games development only the # of items is what is really considered, I'd love to take this system a step further and track the distance objects are placed to each other, and the overall vibe / theme of the design but didn't have the time for that in this jam.
This count dictionary for the player is then checked against the clients requirements. I take the players count and subtract the clients count and then I take that diff and use it to decide the # of points and what dialogue should be picked for the client. If the diff is 0 the player had the perfect amount of items and a "Good" dialogue is selected from the dictionary containing the clients response, and I award the full weight. If the player didn't include the item at all no points are rewarded and a bad dialogue is chosen. But if you are over or under then it checks if you are within a tolerance. The over tolerance is always 2 before you end up with bad dialogue. But the under tolerance is based on the client count. So if the client count is 1, the under tolerance is 0 because then you would've not included the item at all. If its 2 the under tolerance is 1, if its 5 the tolerance is 2, so on and so forth.
This whole system then uses a function that goes through the clients dialogue dictionary and matches up "Good", "Mid" and "Bad" responses with the particular furniture items.
There's a whole bunch of improvements and adjustments that I'm making for the system to be more interesting for the player to interact with. Like a maximum number of responses per attempt, more generalized responses rather than flat out telling the player what is missing. Having the journal update dynamically after submissions. And like I said I want to take it many steps further so the game isn't just about placing an X amount of furniture items and more about the principle of designing a space that the client would actually want.
If you made it this far in the comment then once again thanks for playing and sorry, if you can't tell I like talking about the mechanics lol
Thanks for playing! I appreciate the compliment :) The game is as much about trial and error as it is about reflecting on the clients needs if I'm honest! Part of what I wanted to implement was actual consequences if you continue to fail to meet the needs of the clients but was just so strapped for time so never got around to it. In a more polished version Rox Waddles might challenge the player to a Mexican stand off if you fail 3 times...
This art style is fantastic, I think it fits cozy winter so well. The story was also very cute. My only complaint is the inability to skip dialogue, at least I couldn't figure out how to. The dialogue pacing is on the slower side I would appreciate the ability to skip past parts I may have already seen. Other than that very solid, well done :)
Thanks for the comment! Already working on cleaning the game up and implementing the remainder of ideas I had on my agenda. I quite enjoyed making this style of game, its not something I've ever made before, evidently, and its not a genre I'm too familiar with but it was loads of fun to try and make.
Very interesting concept but I found navigating with the snake rather difficult and actually ending the level a little too tedious. It would be neat if when the snake head collides with the tail it triggered an auto complete for the level. I would love to see this concept taken further, great job for such a short game jam


